冷......

                  Task 3: Hong Kong under different media

July 1^st is the 182nd day of the year (183rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 183 days remaining until the end of the year. The end of this day marks the halfway point of a leap year. It also falls on the same day of the week as New Year's Day in a leap year. In 1997, July 1^st is a special day for all Hong Kong people because the People's Republic of China resumes sovereignty over the city-state of Hong Kong, ending 156 years of British colonial rule.

11 years after the resumption, on the same day of July 1st, many people went onto the street for the July 1st march as what they had usually done in the past 11 years. Three major newspaper media-- Ta Kung Pao, Ming Pao and Apple daily, had reported this annual event in three different attitudes: for the Communists, neutralism and against the Communists.

Ta Kung Pao stated that this year less people went on the street comparing to last year and reported the government’s announcement about the march in a very short paragraph without any pictures. It mainly focused on how Hong Kong people celebrated the resumption.  Ming Pao reported this event impersonally. It described the march with the number of crowd, how the march went on, and what the crowd shouted for.

Apple daily used the whole front page to represent how huge the event was and how eager the people wanted the general election for the Chief Executive of Hong Kong and how ridiculous the government’s announcement was towards the march. It also criticized that the government was hopeless to improve the citizens’ lives.

This situation would never happen in mainland China. In contrast, the Basic Law of Hong Kong enshrined various human rights in the law, including the situation above: Freedom of speech.

According to the definition, Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship or limitation. But actually in any country, in any time, freedom of speech is relative, there is no and it’s impossible to have absolute freedom of speech. The essence of freedom of speech is that anyone including the government can’t limit people’s speech by the reason that it’s irrational, unscientific, extreme or counter the social-development. The only way to limit the speech is that if the speech is harmful to the public interest. Just as Bill Clinton mentioned in a speech in Peking University in 1998, one can never bawls ‘on fire’ in a full cinema out of thin air which can cause people overriding on each other.

But most of Hong Kong people believe that there is absolute freedom of speech and they enjoy this kind of misunderstanding very much. They would go onto the street to exclaim their dissatisfaction towards anyone (most of the cases are towards the government). It’s very fine if they march in piece.

In 2005 during the WTO Ministerial Conference which held in Hong Kong, the demonstrators wanted to arrest the conference by attacking the building. The commissioner of Police of Hong Kong ordered the police to prevent this causing a clash between the demonstrators and the police. Few days later, Joseph Cardinal Zen Ze-kiun, the only Chinese prelate of the Catholic Church, criticized that the commissioner of police of Hong Kong is the humiliation of Hong Kong because he destroyed the freedom of speech.

In my personal of view, I strongly agree what the commissioner had done because the demonstrators would destroy the building or even kill people if the police didn’t interpose. Also I strongly admire the demonstrators because they dare to fight for their rights. But I strongly disagree with the prelate because he can’t understand what freedom is and criticized everything self-righteous. If the police didn’t prevent the demonstrators from attacking the building, would he yell that the police are inept and would he still yell that freedom of speech is an important part disregarding the public interest?

I believe that the prelate represents one of the Hong Kong’s characters: blindfold pursuit of democracy. No matter what kind of attitude the three newspapers hold, they told us one truth: there was a march for the democracy. If we review all this eleven marches, they all have one topic: general election. As the Hong Kong government promises the 5^th Chief Executive will elected by the general election, some people are still unsatisfied with this permission. Even the general election in USA (they state themselves as the most democratic in the world) is not real general until 1824(48 years after nation’s establishment), Hong Kong’s step towards democracy is leading (20 years after HKSAR’s establishment). Giving the devil his due, this blindfold indeed pushes the democracy forward and keeps the government level-headed also disinterested. Just as Antony Leung Kam-chun, former Financial Secretary was criticized fiercely because he bought a car for his babies before adding car-purchase tax. But it puts grit in the governments’ machine many times and becomes a drollery gradually.

今天達成 6公裏

預計賸餘體力：2公裏